Mobile payments to be worth $670bn a year by 2015

Mobile payments may not seem like the biggest industry around, but new figures from Juniper Research reveal it's already a serious cash cow, and is increasing in value at a rapid rate.

How big a cash cow? Well, according to Juniper mobiles will generate a formidable $240 billion in revenue this year alone, rising to a whopping $670bn by 2015.

Interestingly, one of the biggest drivers identified for the nearly three-fold rise in mobile payments is near field communication – despite the fact that just one in five UK consumers expressed interest in the technology in a survey last month.

Juniper's Mobile Payments Strategies report forecasts that 20 countries will launch NFC services in the next 18 months, and that transactions using the technology will approach $50bn worldwide by the year 2014.

“Our analysis shows that emerging segments such as physical goods payments, NFC and money transfers will fuel market growth by a factor of 2.7 times by 2015,” Juniper senior analyst David Snow says in a press release accompanying the report.

“Digital goods is the largest segment and, although forecast to more than double, it is not growing as quickly as some of the newer segments.”

The report also reveals that the top three regions for mobile payments – the Far East and China, Western Europe and North America – will represent three quarters of the world's gross mobile payment transaction value by 2015, and digital goods payments will make up nearly 40% of that total.